You need finance work done and you do not have a finance team. There are five reasonable ways to get it, and they are sold as if they were interchangeable. They are not. Each one is the right answer to a different situation, and one of them is us, so read the section on where we are the wrong answer before you read the one on where we are the right one.
A fractional CFO
What you get: a senior finance person for a few days a month. Judgment, a seat in the board meeting, a name the bank recognizes, someone to call when the term sheet arrives.
What it costs: $8,000 to $15,000 a month, most of it billed by the hour. The model-building itself is often handed to a junior on their team or billed at partner rates, which is a lot to pay for a SUMIF.
Where it wins: when the question is strategic. Should we raise? What should the pricing be? Which bank, which covenant, which structure? A fractional CFO answers those. A spreadsheet only shows the consequences of whatever answer you pick.
Where it loses: when what you need is the reporting pack out on time every month and a forecast that gets refreshed. You are paying for judgment and using it for production.
A freelance modeler
What you get: one deliverable, scoped up front, from one person.
What it costs: $75 to $200 an hour depending on experience and where they are. A three-statement model runs anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousand, and the range comes down to how well you scoped it.
Where it wins: a single well-defined model with a clear finish line. If you can write the spec in a paragraph and you will not need the model touched again for a year, a good freelancer is the cheapest option on this page.
Where it loses: availability, continuity and checking. Their other clients set your turnaround. The next request means finding them again, or finding someone new who has to learn your business from zero. And nobody checks their work except you, which is why how to check a financial model you didn’t build exists.
A template pack
What you get: a generic model for a business shaped roughly like yours, for a one-time fee.
What it costs: tens of dollars to a few hundred.
Where it wins: when your business is standard, you are comfortable in Excel, and you want a starting structure rather than a finished answer. For a first budget at a very early company, a template and an afternoon is a fine plan.
Where it loses: the moment your chart of accounts does not match theirs, which is the first afternoon. A template does not know your data, and adapting it is the work you were trying to avoid. Templates also tend to have checks that look reassuring and cannot fail, because nobody ever broke them on purpose.
An analyst on staff
What you get: capacity, in the building, who learns the business.
What it costs: $90,000 and up, plus benefits, plus the weeks it takes to ramp, plus managing them.
Where it wins: when there is thirty or more hours of finance work every week, every week. At that volume nothing else is cheaper per hour, and the institutional knowledge compounds.
Where it loses: below that volume, you are paying full time for part-time work, and a single person has nobody to check them.
A subscription (this site)
What you get: a request board. You write what you need, attach the data, and a finished, checked workbook comes back. One request in progress at a time, as many as you want, month to month.
What it costs: $1,950 a month, flat. One plan, and everything is on it — reporting work comes back in 48 hours, models in two to four business days. No list price, no tiers to compare, nothing to upgrade to. The pricing section has the whole of it.
Where it wins: when there is a stream of work. The monthly pack, then a forecast refresh, then a pricing question, then the sheet the old bookkeeper left behind. Each one is a request, not a scope, a quote and a new person. And every workbook is checked by a process rather than by whoever had time: recalculated with a formula engine, tie-outs proved able to fail, headline numbers re-derived by a second pass.
Where it loses:
- You need advice, not a model. We will build what the numbers should look like under your assumptions. We will not tell you whether to raise the round.
- You need it today. Reporting is a 48-hour turn and models are two to four business days. If the board meets tomorrow, a freelancer who is free right now is the better call.
- You need five things at once. The queue runs one request at a time. That is on purpose, and it is the wrong shape for a month with five simultaneous deadlines.
- You need bookkeeping, tax or audit. We build the spreadsheet on top of your books; we do not keep them.
- You have one model to build and nothing after it. A freelancer with a crisp spec will likely cost less.
The short version
| You need | Pick | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Strategic judgment, board presence, a raise or a bank negotiation | Fractional CFO |
| 2 | One well-specified model, once | Freelancer |
| 3 | A starting structure you will adapt yourself | Template |
| 4 | Thirty-plus hours of finance work every week | Analyst on staff |
| 5 | A steady stream of reporting and model work, checked, at a fixed monthly cost | Subscription |
Many companies end up with two of these: a fractional CFO for the quarterly judgment and a subscription or an analyst for the monthly production. If the production is the part you are missing, the plans are on the home page and the first request goes on the board the day you sign up.